Fact and Fiction
by Eponymous Rose
Summary: On the run with York and Delta, at the knife's-edge of Project Freelancer's collapse, Tex has been doing a lot of thinking about how Allison died. Written for Tex Appreciation Week on tumblr.
1. Chapter 1

Agent Texas watches the slow turn of the stars and wonders how Allison died.

The Pelican's running lights are at minimum power, doing nothing to smother the brilliant sea of pinpricked light. The spin the ship's picked up from its damaged port thruster isn't enough to override the artificial gravity inside the hull, but the way the stars wheel across the cockpit's viewports is dizzying all the same. Tex presses the back of her helmet against the headrest of the pilot's seat, digs her gloved fingers deep into the plush foam of the armrests, and clings grimly to the illusion of weightlessness, to the sick free-falling feeling.

 _So, hey, you're an artificial intelligence in an artificial body. You're not even one of the_ real _A.I.s, the ones based on the inside of somebody's brain. Nah, you had to go and be one extra level removed from reality, a memory of a memory. What's even better? You don't remember a damn thing about Allison. There's nothing inside you to remind you of who you used to be._

 _Agent Texas, this isn't your life._

Connie's files were incomplete in many ways. They'd showed pictures and video clips and news stories confirming that Allison had been young and brave and had crammed a whole lot of mean-spirited humor into the mock-serious mien she adopted in every one of her official photoshoots. They'd listed disciplinary actions and commendations side-by-side. They'd accounted for every official leave, including the ones Allison had refused to take, the ones where she'd insisted on extra tasks, extra missions. And they'd mentioned a date of death, KIA notice, belongings returned to family. Details not only classified, but unknown. She'd disobeyed orders, moved ahead and cut radio contact with her entire squad. Not one of them had survived.

These are the facts. Nothing else is a matter of official record. It isn't even clear whether she'd been on-planet at the time of her death. She could, conceivably, have been piloting a fighter that moved up too far. She could, conceivably, have fallen victim to explosive decompression.

Tex swallows, gives in to vertigo for a moment and closes her eyes, feels the ghost of movement a second longer in the chair beneath her before her sense of balance reasserts itself and assures her body that, despite what may be happening outside that window, the interior of the ship has an Up and a Down that are clear and consistent. She may as well be sitting on the surface of a planet. _Everything's fine._ These are the facts.

"Wow," says York, softly. "That is one hell of a view."

Without opening her eyes, she says, "It's enough to make you wanna hurl."

"I dunno." She hears him settle into the copilot's seat behind her. "I think it's kinda soothing. Hypnotic, right?"

"Oh, good, we got hypnosis. You gonna bark like a dog if someone tells you to?"

"Meow," York says, deadpan. He's quiet for a while. She has no idea how long. _So hey, good news, you're not one of those robots who can always tell how much time is passing. Awkward silences are still interminable. Chalk one up for humanity._ She's relieved when he finally pushes past some inner emotional constipation to say, "Hey. You okay? You're acting all quiet-like. And I'm not saying I'm averse to a good companionable silence where nobody's trying to kill anybody else, but I'm really not sure what step two is here..."

Tex opens one eye, then narrows it to squint out at the pinwheeling stars. "Well," she says, "we managed to escape the creepy and corrupt experimental military project more or less intact, but now we're stranded and spinning out into the unknown, so. Step two is probably just to die slowly and painfully."

York gives an exaggerated sigh. "You know, it always is?"

A flicker of green reflects in the viewport; Tex half-turns in her chair to see Delta appear next to York. "At least we had not yet entered slipspace when the engine failed. If that had occurred, we would have been torn apart instantly."

"Yikes," says York. "Way to kill the mood, D."

Tex shrugs, still watching Delta. He's not looking directly at her, she thinks. He's avoiding her eyes. _Hell of a thing for a hologram to do..._ "Guess it depends on whether you prefer a quick death or a slow one," she says.

York groans, pressing his face into his hands, scraping his fingertips against his helmet's faceplate. "Wow. Real bundle of laughs here. Welcome to the party ship."

"For us," says Delta, "remaining aboard the _Mother of Invention_ would likely have resulted in a slow and painful death regardless. Depending on how you define living."

York freezes in place for a moment, then brings his hands back to rub them at the base of his skull. Tex resists the urge to reach for her own implant port, a strangely convincing piece of cosmetic trickery for a false mind inside a false body. "We had to try," he says, like he's convincing himself. "We'll come back for them."

Delta's voice is gently insistent, like he's prodding at an old wound to assess pain levels. "If the later A.I. fragments are as unstable as recent events suggest, it is unlikely that Agent Carolina or Agent Washington will ever truly recover. They may already be—"

Tex stands up, walks past them to the cargo hold. No viewports here, no window out to the slow-spinning stars. She doesn't bother with a jumpseat, just sits on the deck with her knees pulled up to her chest, feels the small vibrations of the ship beneath her.

 _Allison_. Even though Omega's been pulled for days, she feels the link between them stir sluggishly at the name. She pulls off a gauntlet, then a glove, stares at her hand under the dim running lights. Three of the nails on her left hand are jagged and uneven where she's bitten them to the quick. There's a scar in the web of her hand between thumb and forefinger, maybe an injection point. She doesn't remember what it's from. Probably doesn't matter.

There are fine hairs on the back of her hand. She watches them stand on end in the chilly air. Who puts that level of detail into a simulation, an android? _A shadow?_ There are so many parts of her that are normal, she knows, after the first frantic self-examination following her skyrocket to full consciousness in the wake of Connie's words, _I know that I can trust you the most_. She thinks about the training sessions, always supervised by the Director, about their casual conversations, the times he'd smiled or laughed at something she'd said and then caught himself and looked away. Her stomach turns at the thought, and for a moment she's freewheeling again, spinning slowly among the stars.

She pulls off her helmet, listens to the hiss of escaping air, breathes in the cold staleness. York, standing at the entrance to the hold, says, "You look..." and trails off.

Gravity reasserts itself. Tex smirks at him. "What? Human? Normal?"

York's quiet for a moment, then pulls off his own helmet in awkward solidarity, scrubbing back his hair until it's standing on end. The jagged scarring stands out bright against his pallor. Neither of them's talked about the grenade. Not much to say. "I was gonna go with 'oddly familiar'. Do I owe you money or something?"

Tex snorts. "Never did get in on one of those poker games," she says. It comes out a little more wistful than she intends it. "Probably would've owned the whole ship by the end of the night."

"Pff, big talker," says York, leaning more casually against the wall. "I'll have you know I cleaned up at a few of those nights myself."

"Without Delta secretly cheating for you?"

"Running probabilities is not cheating," Delta says, a little stiffly. "It is a time-saving measure to—"

"Cheating at cards," Tex says, and sighs, tipping her head back to stare at the ceiling. "I bet you don't even know the Sanghelios Handover."

York taps his finger to his chin. "That the one where you spit acid in your opponents' faces and steal their cards while they're busy screaming?"

Tex grins. "I take it back, there's hope for you yet." She watches him for a moment, then says, "You're scared of me."

"Sure," says York, carefully. "But it's not because you're actually a robot or whatever it is that's going on with you. I've been scared of you a whole lot longer. Promise."

"Delta's scared of me, too."

"Yeah, okay," says York. "That one's a bit more unsettling."

"Uneasy," Delta says, by way of correction. "I... _we_ reacted strongly at the sound of your name."

"Allison," York says. Tex watches Delta, but he doesn't so much as flinch. _Trying too hard to be calm there, buddy. From one robot to another, you're a shitty liar._

"You say you have Agent Connecticut's files," Delta says. "If we could examine those documents, we could perhaps work together to—"

"Nope," says Tex. "Not gonna happen. You know what you need to know."

York sighs, slides into a jumpseat. "Better than knowing nothing, I guess." He looks at her sidelong, then says, " _Can_ you die? I mean, assuming we run out of air or food or water or get all space-bloaty or whatever."

Tex shrugs. "I don't know. I do know this body can be damaged. And I know it hurts."

"Somebody made that a deliberate choice," York says. His voice has gone low, thoughtful, but she's pretty sure there's anger smoldering just beneath the surface, and for a moment she thinks she can feel the weightless spin of the stars.

"The sensation of pain can be a positive thing," Delta says. "Especially in a soldier, the knowledge of damage to one's body is essential for optimal performance."

"That's bullshit," York says. "If you had the ability to... to create someone, you'd want to spare them feeling pain."

"When we are in combat," Delta says, slowly and carefully, "I sometimes interface with your neurological system to improve my combat recommendations. When you feel pain, York, so do I."

York gives an explosive sigh. His helmet, in his hand, makes a little abortive motion, like he's just caught himself short of throwing it.

Tex rolls her eyes. "Great, yeah, meaning-of-humanity stuff, what a wonderful way to start the evening. Existential crises all around. Be sure to grab your party bags on the way out, they're full of angst."

"I would submit," Delta says, "that imminent death is an ideal time to ponder existential questions."

Tex squints. "You know your A.I.'s kind of a little shit, right?"

"He does that," York says, wearily. "Hey, D. I know I'm gonna regret asking, but how long do we have left? I mean, me specifically, I guess?"

"Approximately twenty minutes."

Tex's spine goes rigid. "The hell? We leaking air or something?"

"I do not believe so."

York leans down to stage-whisper, "He's got that smug tone of voice. He's being needlessly literal to mess with us."

"We've got twenty minutes," Tex deadpans, "until..."

"Until the salvage vessel patrolling this region notices us. I imagine they'll be pleased to tow us to the nearest station in exchange for any of the less sensitive intel we acquired from Freelancer."

York waves a hand, theatrically. "There it is."

"Fucker," Tex says, and tries to ignore the way her surge of exasperated fondness brings up a disquieting sense of déjà vu.


	2. Chapter 2

They get dumped at a space station, a trading port, where some outdated Freelancer armor schematics with a built-in failure state buy them repairs to their Pelican. By unspoken agreement, York and Tex part ways when they're urged to leave the ship by their nervous mechanics. There'll be time for strategizing, for talk, later. Right now, they've got a few hours to kill.

Tex squares her shoulders. She's always been—at least, she thinks she's always been—at home in a crowd. The anonymity appeals to her, now more than ever, with the skin between her shoulders itching at the lightness of her civvies. The armor would be too conspicuous, Delta argued, and Tex was inclined to agree, although she's pretty sure this grubby little station is so far off the Director's radar that they could send up fireworks that spelled out "YES HELLO FREELANCERS HERE" and they still wouldn't be found before they'd had ample time to repair, restock, and refuel. It's entirely possible nobody's looking for them at all—the explosion when the port thruster had given out was pretty spectacular. Maybe they were presumed dead.

 _Hell, 'presumed dead' is an upgrade for some of us_. At the thought, she grins in such an alarming way that a woman walking past does a double-take and nearly walks into a wall.

She ends up perched on a stool in a shitty little bar, because it's the one place on this forsaken station that doesn't have a window out to the stars, and also because nothing works for washing down existential angst like cheap whiskey.

She has plenty of vague memories of whiskey and bourbon, but she's not sure whether they were built into her programming from day one, or whether she'd just sort of... extrapolated from the knowledge that Allison had been a girl from Texas who'd loved motorcycles and picking fights. It seems like a reasonable combination.

She wonders if Allison ever strolled out to a bar in the middle of the night, figured out where the assholes sat, which was _their_ barstool. Wonders if she ever sat there, grinning in the face of their territorial rage until someone cracked and threw the first punch.

She'd win her fights, of course. She'd always win, except for the one time it mattered most. _But hell, nobody's perfect_.

Tex has started thinking of these ventures into hypothetical memory as a sort of fugue state. She's never sure she's entirely conscious when they're happening, and she always comes out of them feeling dazed and unreal.

This time, she snaps out of it with someone's shirt balled up in her hand, swinging back for a second punch. He's holding a knife in his hand. There's blood on her civvies. Her breathing is fast and hard in her ears, and looking past him, she sees the bartender huddled in a corner, carefully wrapping a knife-wound in her thigh.

Omega uncoils in her mind, stretching languidly along her nerve endings, and she grins.

She hits the knife-wielding bastard hard enough to break his nose and send him stumbling to the floor, then spins, bouncing on the balls of her feet. She can't get drunk, not really, but she can feel the buoying energy of the alcohol, the manufactured, placebo buzz. Genius over there has got buddies, at least a dozen of 'em, just this side of bright enough to break a bottle to use as a weapon without also embedding shattered glass in their own hands. Place like this attracts a lot of crime, she figures. Couldn't hurt to do a little something about it.

They're sizing her up, smart enough to be cautious after what she did to their buddy. But hell, she could take these guys out in her sleep.

 _I don't need your help_ , she remembers, and wonders whether that was Allison speaking. _Yeah, you know what? Fuck what Allison would do. This could be fun._

She opens an internal, tight-band commlink, without breaking eye contact with the asshole warily circling her from the left. "Hey, York," she says. "You want in on a shitty bar fight? Yeah. Figured you might."

"That your backup?" snarls Asshole, Stage Right.

Tex just grins at him. "Hello, boys," she says, sweetly. "You have no idea what kind of trouble you're in."

By the time York shows up, they're down to three or four, but Tex graciously lets him handle them while she finishes her drink. He seems to need the stress relief.

The whiskey tastes like gasoline, but the bartender insisted it was on the house once she realized Tex was going out of her way to throw the troublemakers _away_ from the bottles behind the counter rather than into them. Tex isn't about to pass up free booze. She's also more than a little tempted to just shrug off the last of Project Freelancer and offer up her services as a bodyguard for this place—it'd be good money, and money means nobody's gonna be able to control you.

She spins on her barstool, idly, and watches as York closes with the last guy, smiling and keeping up a steady stream of friendly chatter to cover his wince. They've both let a few hits slip through; there's a tear in the artificial skin across her ribs that stings like hell, and he's apparently doing his level best to ignore a deep slash along his forearm. She suspects they're both being a little sloppy on purpose. Nothing like pain to make you feel alive.

 _Yeah, and did Allison feel that way? Is that why she charged forward against orders? Why she always stayed away from home if she could help it?_

Tex scowls at her drink, rubs at the cut across her ribs to feel the twinge—but no blood, she notices. There's never any blood.

When he's done knocking out the last guy, York slumps onto the stool next to her, clutching his bloodied arm with a grimace. "That's gonna leave a mark," he says, and smiles winningly at the bartender. "Hey, you wouldn't happen to have a first-aid kit?"

Wordlessly, she hands over what looks like a standard-issue military IFAK. Tex raises her eyebrows, but the bartender only shrugs, watching with grossed-out interest as York injects biofoam into the wound. Tex slides her half-full glass across the bar to York, who downs it in one gulp. Then he rests his forehead against the bar and says, "I don't want to go back," so softly she almost misses it.

"Good for you. I _need_ to go back," says Tex, and smiles wryly when the bartender just gives up and hands her the rest of the whiskey bottle. She takes a long swig. "There's someone who needs an extraction. And I'd like to try and save whoever... whoever's left." She raises the bottle to York. "Never abandon your team."

York sighs, heavily, and rubs his face, which only succeeds in smearing blood around. "D thinks Wash might be dead. They sure as hell didn't let anybody see him after the implantation went south, and I heard him screaming. And Carolina..."

Tex says nothing, just stands up, tosses a credit chit at the bartender, and strides out of the bar, ignoring York's call of her name, stepping over bodies along the way. She walks for a while, aimlessly, drawing worried looks whenever anyone notices the slash in her shirt, the blood on her knuckles, but nobody bothers her. Nobody stops her.

She wanders to a halt somewhere in the bowels of the station—sure as hell smells like the bowels of _something_ , anyway. Machinery and rubbish heaps, a dingy accumulation from the folks who managed to get to the station but couldn't afford to leave. She leans against a wall. She wonders how long it'll take the cut in her side to heal without Freelancer's mechanical staff around to fix it. She doesn't even remember what that process entailed; in her mind, she'd always spent some unspecified amount of time in Medical, and she'd come out feeling fine. She wonders how many other things they fixed while she wasn't quite conscious.

She also wonders, vividly, whether Allison ever took a hit like that, whether Allison bled all over her pristine uniform before they'd found her, whether she'd tasted blood or died too quickly.

A rustle of sound drags her back to the here and now. Tex watches a pile of snack wrappers rustle, forces her strung-out nerves to relax. Vermin are plentiful up here; some particularly bright individual must've brought them up here as pets. Or maybe it was for revenge in some convoluted feud. _A plague on your house..._

The rustling dies out. A small, furry face pokes out of the pile, whiskers twitching. At first, Tex is convinced it's a rat, but it's pitch-black and its eyes are a brilliant gold. It takes her a moment to realize it's just a particularly scrawny cat.

She crouches down, holds out her hand. The cat flattens its ears, burrowing a little bit back into its filthy den. "Yeah," Tex mutters, drawing her hand back. "Same."

But she watches it for a while, until the giant pupils get smaller and the animal slowly goes back to snuffling for food in the mess, and then she shuffles back to sit with her back against the wall and stare up at the ceiling.

They've got to go back. She does, anyway. She's got... an obligation, toward Alpha. He's as much a victim in this as anyone. She thinks North might be persuaded to help, with Theta on the line and all, and she has no reason to doubt York's commitment, but the rest are... complicated.

 _You've got an obligation to someone else, Tex. Don't forget her._

She feels sick, suddenly, curls over her drawn-up knees and presses her forehead into them, breathing hard and fast and shallow. "What the _fuck_ ," she whispers, softly, because who the hell builds this into their grand design, their magnum opus? Nausea. Fuckin' _guilt_ that gnaws. Green eyes bright with pain, a limp body plugged into endless monitors, the visceral agony of her knuckles connecting, the echoing silence that follows the screaming...

An inquisitive chirp draws her back. She looks up, shakily, and sees the little cat nosing at her combat boots, gnawing on the laces. "Oh, great," she says. "We gonna share a touching moment where I have an epiphany about the value of life?"

The cat blinks, hunkers down, and coughs up a hairball all over her boot.

"Eugh," Tex says. "Yeah, okay, that's about what I figured." The little beast permits a quick scritch behind its ears before it darts back into the darkness, and then Tex is getting to her feet, rubbing at the implant port at the back of her neck.

She's startled when she looks at her chrono and realizes exactly how much time has passed. Their repairs have gotta be done by now.

She calls up York, and after half a minute she finally gets a breathy, dazed, "'lo?"

"Time to go," she says.

"Didn't mean what I said," he slurs. "'bout not wanting to to to go back. I gotta. I wanna save them all."

"Yeah, buddy," she says, distractedly, trying to retrace her steps to the bar. By the sound of him, York's gonna need an escort back to their ship. "You do that. You can climb that whole mountain."

"I can," York says, a little belligerently. "I got Delta. I got you."

Tex closes her eyes for a moment, just a moment, then starts walking. "Yup," she says. "Whatever the hell I am, you've got me."


	3. Chapter 3

They still don't have a plan of attack, not really.

York is out for the count, sprawled across a line of jumpseats in the Pelican's hold. Tex is sitting on the floor across from him, idly digging through their new armory; the bartender, when Tex had gone back to retrieve York, had been more than happy to hook them up with all the spike grenades they could carry. Apparently her girlfriend was in the weapons-smuggling business and had good reason to appreciate the two mysterious heroes who'd saved the day. Small world.

 _So there you are, Agent Texas. You got guns, you got allies, you got a target. More sadness than anger, but fuck it, the anger's gonna be there when you call, Omega will make sure of that. This is you. This isn't Allison. Never was. This is what_ you _do. You kill the fuckers who did this to you, and you get the other poor bastards out alive, and you look damn good doing it._

She exhales, slowly. Across from her, York mumbles something in his sleep and rolls to face her, and for a second she freezes, taken by the way he looks right now, unconscious, exhausted, out of armor. Alive. Only one chance, there. No ambiguities. No identity crises. When that's all you've got, you're only as good as who you make yourself out to be.

Tex puts her armor back on over her civvies, slowly, piece by piece, checking each strap for weakness or signs of wear. The cut along her ribs hurts, but the hurt's good, sharp, dragging her attention from the abyss of panic, from the slow burn along her synapses of Omega's reawakening. When she puts the helmet on, the seal tightens, and she breathes recirculated air that's all her own.

She walks into the cockpit, sits at the pilot's chair. With the engine repaired, the stars are no longer wheeling in dizzying circles across the viewport; right now, they're static, almost serene. She knows that they're actually moving, that the whole damn galaxy's spinning together once you pull back far enough, but for now she's happy with the illusion.

A flicker of green light draws her attention to the pilot's readouts. She smiles at Delta, even though he can't see her face under her helmet. "Hey, Delta. How's he doing?"

"York is healing well," Delta says. "His healing unit will have repaired the damage long before we reenter the _Mother of Invention_ 's sphere of detection. If that is the course of action we choose."

"Sounds good," Tex says, leaning back in her chair. "I get the sense that you don't think this is the wisest thing to do."

"Not exactly," Delta says. "I appreciate the need for closure, for... revenge. But I also believe we are too late to save anyone."

"Probably," Tex says.

"And that doesn't bother you?"

Tex breathes, looks out at the stars. "'Course it bothers me. Think it'd actually kill me, if I let it. But we have a chance. We gotta take it. Not taking that chance would kill me faster."

"Reckless," Delta says, softly. "I understand. It's only logical."

Tex sighs, leans back in her chair, watches the stars. It takes her a moment to realize that Delta's been lending a very deliberate weight to his words. She straightens. She feels a chill. "Delta," she says.

"Yes, Agent Texas?"

"What did you mean by, 'it's only logical'."

For the first time, Delta's holographic avatar doesn't look away; he stares at her directly. "Recklessness. That is how Allison died," he says.

She stands up, paces back a couple steps, remembers York's sleeping in the hold, and paces back. "What the _fuck_ ," she snarls. "I told you not to dig through Connie's files. Did you do that while we were off-ship?"

"You did not tell me not to dig through Connie's files," Delta says, with irritating calm. "You told me that York and I already knew what we needed to know. I disagreed with that assessment."

Tex balls her hand into a fist, feels Omega crackling down her spine. "That was mine," she says, and isn't sure why she says it. "You understand? That was mine to know."

"I operated out of concern for York's safety. And yours."

Tex inhales, shakily, then breathes out her anger on the exhale. "Yeah," she says. "Everyone knows what's best for Tex."

When she slumps back into the pilot's seat, Delta's light is a little dimmer, almost subdued. "I did find something," he says. "I did some cross-referencing with classified personnel files. I... I believe I have discovered exactly how Allison died. In return for the data I gathered, I thought you might like to see it. I've downloaded it to the Pelican's database. The files are on your screen."

Tex slams her eyes shut in an attempt to blot out the roaring in her ears, breathes softly. Thinks of the taste of blood in her mouth, never experienced but remembered all the same. Thinks of explosive decompression and pinwheeling stars.

"No," she says. "Delta, it's okay. Delete the files. Destroy the source, if you can. Let her rest. She's long gone."

"I understand," Delta says, again. After a moment, he adds, "Files deleted. The information is no longer accessible."

"Go check on York, huh?"

"Agent Texas, I feel I should apologize for—"

"It's fine, Delta. Just go check on York."

When Tex opens her eyes, she's alone in the cockpit.

 _Agent Texas,_ she thinks, like she's trying the name on for the first time, like she's drawing it over all the empty places, patching the holes. _Tex._

She cracks her knuckles, then inputs a slow, meandering course to the _Mother of Invention_ 's last known coordinates. They aren't gonna expect them back. Not so soon.

Coordinates set, she leans back in her chair, watches the starscape tilt and wheel as the ship makes corrections. _So the truth's gone,_ she thinks. _Nothing left of it but a name that's not yours. No records, no proof, no life story to anchor you._

Her smile behind her helmet is fierce and secret, hers and hers alone. _So what? That means you've only got one job left to do._

Her heart, false clockwork, is racing. The stars yawn out endlessly in front of her.

 _Okay, Tex. Your turn to tell a better story._


End file.
